Response to Response by Juliana Spahr

Response gets four and a half Hello Kittys.

What follows is a transcript of my handwritten annotations. I usually take notes in the margin while I'm reading a book, but after seeing on Amazon and Abebooks that a first edition paper back is going for between $75-$150, I though twice. Dan got my first edition paperback copy at John K. King Books in Detroit for $5. Clearly, the kind folks at John K. King Books had no idea what a gem this book is. I was thinking if I should keep my copy clean, just in case it ever becomes worth the cost of a pair of Chrome Hearts sunglasses...Psyche! I would never trade in poetry for designer shades...OK, maybe I would...
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Page 15 -- "an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric" -- Association: an O'Keefe quote: "Nothing is less real than realism" from the book Two Lives: A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs.

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Page 14 -- "we know [name of major historical figure] calls, authentically, / for more total, more radical war than we can even / dream in the language of avant-garde // we know a commercial promises to reduce plaque more / effectively in this same tone" -- Written in 1995, I assume she processing the Bosnian War, but my context is in now and these lines can apply to now too, the Iraq War.
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Page 18 -- "while overwhelmed by an opera [name of major historical / figure] plans genocide" -- Art doesn't stop violence...What is the function of art? To tell history? To retell history? To evoke response? A good or bad response?
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Page 20 -- "[it is impossible to speak about something // it is only possible to speak beside it" -- Wish I had wrote this.
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Page 22 -- "rewritten, the goal of the artist is to prevent reality in a true and / concrete manner" -- Yes, this is what Spahr seems to be doing. Reality is complex like this--different perspectives are represented by the generalities in the brackets, so anyone in the world could plug in words from his/her culture.
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Page 23 -- "[generic human figure] claims I can get more information at / home than by going to the war scene" -- Keep thinking of the war in Iraq.
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Response to world culture and a call to respond to world culture...?
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Page 28 -- "my zero-level writing / my zero-level writing" -- Association = Ground Zero. But also, we can only respond to what has come before us. From a writer standpoint, my poetry responds to writers who have affected me in person or on the page. And their writing responds to writing that has affected them. Spahr is attempting to do something new. But is any art really new? Can zero-level exist in art?
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Page 26 -- "Symbols and / numbers best convey our ideas" -- numbers & symbols = language = art
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Page 31 -- "we know we are all constructed // when it comes down to it we don't believe it // the social always holds us back // while the ways that we encounter relation are various // we remain // searching [searching // we question, respond // [deny we [move forward" -- I wish I wrote this.
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The poem "thrashing seems crazy" reminds me of KLA's poetry -- smart, concise, exposing the underbelly of fucked-up-ness. Spahr gives context, "This poem draws from an Oprah episode on the case of Ruth Finely, a woman who, because of 'dissociative personality disorder,' was stalked by a male persona of herself."
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Page 37 -- "as disbelief is easy / belief is difficult, supported by constraint" -- True dat.
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A spider landed on my book. Freaked. FD killed him. Line/Web went from book to house, about 4 ft. (I was tanning and reading outside this morning.) Then read these lines, "killing is an ordinary act the two men, the neighbor, the / numerous clips from new programs assure" (46) -- My small noticing for today.
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Page 46 -- "[at] [a] [loss] [for] [words,]" -- [ ] is not the word within but some other word/expression there isn't language for.
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First I thought the words in brackets were just a plug-in or substitute. The brackets change in each section?
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Page 60 -- "the vocabulary of comfort" -- I wish I had written this.
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The poem "testimony" connects back to the quote about lies on page 8: "somewhere between the truth and the lie is the truth"
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Page 69 -- How do we respond to testimonies of alien abductions? -- "my point here is not the laugh / nor the truth / nor to merely explore truth's turns, information's conspiracies // it is: // what do we do? // trust no one? // trust no I? // as we try to look with eyes better than what we've had before"
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Page 72 -- "as there is possibility that beings might have hired a P R firm / which created My Favorite Martian, ALF, Star Trek, Star / Wars, AlienNation, ET, and other shows post the 1950s / all media become evidence or proof / or part of the conspiracy to expose beings" -- With anything, does media expose evidence or conspire?
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The end of "testimony" is very accessible. Even though Spahr's work is experimental her purpose and what she's trying to accomplish are quite clear.
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"witness" is my favorite poem, but I'm not sure how to articulate why. I guess it accurately communicates the various roles we play in our lives and how sometimes those roles are binary opposites.
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Reading "witness" again.
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It's a response to the change in reaction to the HIV/AIDS epidemic...But more than that too...That we all have the ability to witness, to believe, to act--to remember, then act.
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Page 90 -- "the anger is to draw attention to the way anger is a just re- / sponse / to how they will be angry until just witness is begun" -- Yes, that's anger. She pinned it down.
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Pages 94-97 -- There couldn't be a better end. It's perfect poetically, but it shows the imperfection of humanity....
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